Maguire, Pepe & 10 flops who cost more than Haaland
Carlo Garganese
- 13 Jun 2022 10:11 BST
- 7 min read
Erling Haaland’s move from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester City was confirmed by the English club on Monday, with the Norwegian superstar signing on a five-year contract.
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Incredibly, Haaland’s transfer fee was only €60 million, owing to a release clause he had in his Borussia Dortmund contract.
This was an unbelievably low fee for a 21-year-old who is not only one of the best strikers in the world but expected to be a generational player.
Below, we look at some flops who moved for transfer fees higher than Haaland.
Philippe Coutinho (Liverpool to Barcelona, 2018) - €145m
After Ousmane Dembele failed to immediately replace Neymar, having been signed to replace the Brazilian after his world record move to PSG, the Blaugrana threw money at the problem again by purchasing Philippe Coutinho for an outrageous initial fee of €121m plus bonuses.
The move turned out to be a disaster for all parties as Coutinho failed to make an impact on the team, regularly taking up the same positions as Lionel Messi before the Argentine left the club.
Coutinho came back to Barca after a mixed loan spell at Bayern Munich in 2019-20, and things failed to get any better upon his return.
In January of 2022, he was allowed to leave on loan to Aston Villa, before recently turning his move permanent for a fee of just €20m.
Jack Grealish (Aston Villa to Man City, 2021) - €118m
Jack Grealish was signed for a British record fee in the summer of 2021, but pound for pound, he has been the biggest transfer flop of the season.
The 26-year-old has just two league goals and three assists all season from 25 games. In the last nine months he has one goal and two assists, against lowly Leeds, and Brighton and Newcastle respectively.
Grealish’s performances have also not been worthy of such an astronomical outlay. Tactically, he has struggled to adapt to Pep’s system and he has been accused of taking too many touches and slowing down the team’s play.
He also was responsible for Man City going out of the Champions League semi-finals when he missed two easy chances just minutes before Real Madrid’s late second-leg comeback.
Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid to Barcelona, 2019) - €120m
Tactically this was a transfer that always seemed doomed to fail from the outset - and it proved to be so.
If you are a short, skilful, left-footed support striker, you have no chance of prospering in the same team as Lionel Messi. Just ask Paulo Dybala when it comes to the Argentina national team.
Griezmann and Messi often occupied the same spaces, while the Frenchman was at times shifted out of position in order to co-exist in the same team as the Argentine superstar.
In two years, he scored a very meagre 21 league goals and just four Champions League strikes. A very disappointing return given how much Barca spent for him.
He failed to win either La Liga or the Champions League.
Barcelona eventually agreed to offload him at a big loss back to Atletico Madrid in the summer of 2021
Paul Pogba (Juventus to Man Utd, 2016) - €105m
After leaving Manchester United on a Bosman Transfer in 2012, Paul Pogba developed into one of the best midfielders in the world.
Four years later, Man Utd brought him back to Old Trafford at the age of 23 for a then world record fee of £89m.
It was hoped that Pogba would be the man to make Man Utd the dominant side in England and beyond again after three miserable years since the retirment of Sir Alex Ferguson.
However, Pogba was hugely underwhelming during his six years back at the club.
Although there were some sporadic spells and games where he demonstrated his quality, he was wildly inconsistent and never seemed to fit into the team tactically.
He became increasingly injury-prone and irrelevant towards the end of his time and he decided to leave on another free transfer in 2022. He won just an EFL and Europa League.
Eden Hazard (Chelsea to Real Madrid, 2019) - €100m
Eden Hazard’s transfer to Madrid had long been a case of when, not if, he would go, but as it’s turned out the ‘when’ was much more critical than it seemed.
Coming off his most impressive individual season at Chelsea, the then-28-year-old was granted his dream move to Los Blancos as a sure-fire Galactico.
However, arriving overweight for pre-season laid down a marker for a troubled first two seasons. A talisman who often carried his team to success is now being brought along for the ride, with injuries and poor discipline to blame.
Since arriving at Real Madrid, the once unplayable Belgian has had more injuries than goal contributions. Madrid are now desperate to get rid of him after a third successive poor season.
Harry Maguire (Leicester to Man Utd, 2019) - €87m
If there is one player who has epitomised Manchester United's disastrous recent years, it is Harry Maguire.
The England centre-back was signed for a world record fee for a defender back in 2019 and his signing illustrates just how bad the decision-making has been by those in power at Old Trafford.
His first two seasons weren’t as bad as some made out but 2021-22 has been an unmitigated disaster.
He has become a figure of fun among fans and the media after making error after error all campaign. InStat recently revealed that Maguire has made 16 errors leading to opposition goals this past campaign.
Nicolas Pepe (Lille to Arsenal, 2019) - €80m
Much of Arsenal’s history in the Premier League has been defined by wide players proving to be the difference makers in key games. So when the club made Nicolas
Pepe their record signing in 2019 for a fee of £72m fans were understandably delighted and excited to see what he could do.
Pepe arrived from Lille with the reputation of being a free-scoring wide player that could create goals just as easily as he could score them. However, the reality of the situation was very different to the hopes and dreams of the Arsenal faithful and the board that had just sanctioned the transfer.
While Pepe had indeed scored 22 goals for Lille in the league the previous season, few had bothered to mention that almost half that tally came from the penalty spot until the player was halfway through his first campaign in the English top flight and looked undoubtedly troubled by the quality he was facing.
In his first season at Arsenal, Pepe managed just five goals and six assists in 31 league games. This term things have got even worse, with just five starts and one goal. He will be sold this summer if a buyer can be found.
Kepa Arrizabalaga (Athletic Bilbao to Chelsea, 2018) - €80m
Due to their policy of only fielding players from the Basque region, it’s extremely expensive to pry players away from Athletic Bilbao, as Chelsea found out with Kepa.
A world-record fee for a goalkeeper was agreed as the club needed a replacement for the Real Madrid-bound Thibaut Courtois, but it’s not gone to plan.
Under Maurizio Sarri, Kepa was average at best; he wasn’t awful, he looked promising, but certainly not world class. The 2019/20 season, however, was another story.
He had the lowest save percentage of goalkeepers in the league, conceding 47 Premier League goals whilst making just 1.7 saves per 90, the least of any ‘keeper with more than one appearance in the league.
He was then replaced by Edouard Mendy as first choice for the following two seasons as Chelsea gave up on the Spaniard.
Angel Di Maria (Real Madrid to Man Utd, 2014) - €75.6m
On the face of it, the signing of Angel Di Maria in the summer of 2014 made perfect sense. He was their record transfer at the time at £59m, having just helped Real Madrid to the Champions League with a man of the match performance in the final.
There were similar issues to Juan Sebastian Veron in that he struggled to adapt to his surroundings, and his house being burgled certainly didn’t help him settle.
But if Louis van Gaal expected Di Maria to lead the team into a new era, he signed the wrong player. Having played alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, he impressed away from the limelight and struggled with the pressure of being the club’s main man.
Alvaro Morata (Real Madrid to Chelsea, 2017) - €65.5m
Alvaro Morata was never a consistent regular at Real Madrid, but the form he displayed on loan at Juventus, and during his fleeting appearances for Los Blancos, suggested that he was a talismanic figure with expert instincts in the box.
That forced Abramovich’s hand, even though Antonio Conte publicly stated he wanted Romelu Lukaku, and Morata was signed. It started so well for the club-record signing (at the time), he netted once and grabbed an assist, as well as scoring a disallowed goal, as he almost inspired a comeback off the bench against Burnley on his Premier League debut.
He scored 15 goals and assisted six in 30 starts in all competitions in his first season, but poor finishing in his second year, and just five Premier League goals in 2018/19, saw him loaned to Atletico Madrid for £16m, before they signed him for just over £30m permanently.
He may have recouped most of his transfer fee, but Morata’s time at Chelsea was not a pleasant one.
